net.dinner = Networking Layers

This week's discussion centered around networking. The beauty of the discussion group is that it exposes us to topics in a less formal context, which helps me remember. It wasn't formal, and I didn't take notes, but here are the highlights of what I recall from the conversation alone (after a day).

• OSI Layers of Networking  
• Seven Layers. A few significant ones: 
• Physical (literal wires, cables, plugs)
• Network (switches, hubs, wifi)
• Internet (routers, firewalls, IP addresses)
• Packets = normally page size (4k) 
• Mail delivery trucks that carry briefcases   
• Private and Public Keys --- Briefcase Analogy: 
• Put secret in a briefcase
• Snap a FRIEND'S lock on it
• Give it to a friend
• Friend snaps YOUR lock on it
• Returns it to you
• Nobody needs to share actual keys ( "asymmetric" system ) 
• Twitter Presenter's suggestion to make your system ....[better word] easily expandable? broad? 
• Advocating Parallelism vs Serialism 
• Dependancies - "You won't get a baby in a month if you get 9 women pregnant at the same time."
• 9 babies after 9 months = Parallelism  
• Mom 1 = head, Mom 2 = torso, Mom 3 = etc.... Serialism 
• Asynchronous != Parallel 
• Steve Sounders's SPOF example: synchronous widget times out and prevents front end from loading. If it were asynchronous, might be skipped and loaded later - not necessarily in parallel. 

There were some great morbid analogies, and Mary's British accent made them even better. I wish I could remember them all. 

Each time, we're going to decide the next topic based on interests of those who showed up. Current interests center around security and networking, so next week we are discussing the OWASP Top Ten Most Critical Web Application Security Risks.    

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      Sarah.appreciate = true; 

;)